CASE STUDY

With 33 million objects across five locations, including 11 million photographs and the UK’ s second-largest film archive, the Imperial War Museums( IWM) faced a fundamental challenge: making vast collections discoverable.

Nick Hodder, Director of Digital Engagement and Transformation at IWM, describes the institution’ s reach:“ We’ re five physical spaces, but actually, if we think about who we are, we hold more than 33 million objects. Among that collection, we also have a huge amount of what we call oral histories, which are audio interviews with people who experienced war and conflict: not just soldiers on the front line, but people at home as well, civilians.”

The accessibility challenge was immediate.“ We had digitised audio that was available to everyone, so if you go online you could find stories manually by just listening to the audio,” Nick explains.“ There are a number of problems with that – one might be accessibility. Perhaps you have hearing loss – that audio file is not available to you in the same way as it is to everyone else.”

Traditional solutions fell short and historical context made the problem worse.“ We’ ve been using digital transcription for a number of years, but the accuracy level of that is a lot lower than we would want,” Nick notes.“ Back in the 1940s and 50s, accents were broader than they are now, and you only really realise that when you listen to some of this audio.”

Contextual understanding Working with Google and Capgemini, IWM deployed AI transcription that grasps meaning beyond individual words.“ We have one interview with a sailor who constantly talks about‘ ooks’ and the transcription said

34 October 2025